I recently ran across an extremely active discussion on LinkedIn. The topic was What's the #1 Voice Mail Mistake Average Sales People Make?

At last tally, the thread had 65+ comments & I thought I'd do some analysis of the sentiments in this hot debate. The first debate point broke down around:

Which is the bigger mistake, leaving or not leaving voice mail?

There were certainly strong opinions on both sides, but the vast majority favored using voicemail as a tool in the sales process.

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The second debate centered around:

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I wanted to share 3 comments that stuck out for me:

 
I would love to hear your thoughts.

• Should sales people be leaving voicemails? 
• What mistakes do see you Reps making?

Last week LinkedIn rolled out a new feature: “Follow Company”. My initial reaction was that this would just add to the information clutter problems that we’re all facing.

After a week of limited use, I can say my first impression was dead wrong. This tool should be added to the Inside Sales arsenal today.
 

What it does

LinkedIn describes the feature as follows:

 
What it gives Reps

On this blog and in conversation with clients, we stress the importance of trigger events and delivering timely, relevant & compelling messaging in outbound prospecting efforts.

“Follow Company” gives your Reps a stream of potentially relevant trigger events that use changes in the buyer’s environment to potentially engage in conversation. For example:

Now, I’m sensitive to the difficult balancing act between crafting buyer-centric messaging and establishing & meeting Inside Sales productivity goals.

The reason for my bullishness on this tool is that it’s native to LinkedIn and doesn’t add to the growing list of applications & sites that are involved in pre-call planning. 

 
Who it's best for

There are some limitations to which types of organizations can or should be followed. Follow Company works best for:

But what do you think? How do we walk the fine line between preparation and activity?
Can this tool be useful in your Reps’ prospecting efforts?

Also, here’s a great write-up on the how to use Follow Company. Thanks for listening

Dan shared a truly horrific sales story, which I've transcribed:
 

 Wow. Thankfully in Inside Sales, we're spared from making that same atrocious (and fatal) slip-up.

But that doesn't mean that we in Inside Sales should not focus on building rapport the new-fashioned way. More often than not, with information that's publically available on the internet, we can learn 10x more about a prospect than we could from a quick glance around their office.

So why shouldn't rapport involve:

Nigel Edelshain shared an excellent example of the Inside Sales slip-up in his Sales 2.0 Vendor Cold Call that Sucked!. Here's an excerpt:

Nigel's point is spot on. In the comments on his post, Krista Moon makes the point that Sales people cannot be expected to both do the leg work of pre-call planning and hit the activity metrics defined by Senior Management.

I would argue that meaningful conversations is the metric. Banging through a list with vanilla messaging, unaware of the business issues, interests and other unique buyer persona qualities of the recipient is a waste of resource (for the vast majority of sales organizations). The trick is finding the right balance between pre-call planning and activity that makes the process repeatable and scalable.

Would you agree?

The question of whether or not to leave a voicemail in prospecting efforts is a very hot topic right now. There was an excellent discussion at Focus on Does anyone leave voicemails anymore? which I recommend you take a look at.

Now, I've already shared a little rant on what not to do when leaving voicemails: Do Your Team's Voicemails Sell the Conversation? But more importantly, if probably less buzz-worthy, I wanted to share a recent example of someone who did it right.

I receive a fair amount of cold calls and almost never pick up my phone for an unfamiliar / blocked number. I do, however, listen to my messages up to the point that the seller loses my interest. But the other day, I received a voicemail that held my interest and really sold the conversation. The seller addressed two hugely important things for me within the 1^st 10 seconds:
 

So what did I, the buyer, hear?

If you'll allow me, I want to share a quick story about Why You? / Why You Now? (WY? WYN?). First off, it's not my concept. Somewhere in '04 / '05 I took a sales training class with Jeff Hoffman from Basho Strategies. He introduced me to WY? WYN? And it's something I have thought about weekly for the better part of the last 5 years. Talk about sales training with legs!

The strategy is simple - outbound messaging must revolve around that fact that buyers don't care what you have to say unless you answer for them directly and up-front Why Me? / Why Me Now?

I would love to hear your thoughts? What do you think of WY? WYN? How does your team deliver outbound messaging that get prospects to move?

(Photo Credit: Kaptain Kobold)

I want to pick up the "selling the conversation" notion again but this time as it relates to voicemail.

I stepped out of the office yesterday and returned to the following voicemail. (Note: I changed the name, company and whitepaper title to protect the innocent.) The left side is what they said and the right side is what I heard.

Does this voicemail sell the conversation to you? Would you have felt compelled to return this call? Is that what you generally do?

Every interaction with a prospect needs to deliver a compelling reason for them to take action. Whether warm, cold calling or inbound follow-up, we have to sell the conversation.

So what might First Longlastname have done differently? Here's a few ideas:

You get the idea. If your team's voicemails:

Then you are well on your way to selling the conversation in your prospecting process.

Am I expecting too much? Are there any other ideas on what First Longlastname could/should have done?

(Photo credit: dorseygraphics)

I recently read a great post Robert Lesser, of Direct Impact Marketing, wrote called Use Outbound Marketing to Target These Buyer Types.  It coordinates nicely with our recent discussion around The Flaw In Calculating Inbound v. Outbound Marketing.

The meat of Robert's argument is that having an intimate knowledge of your buyer has never been more important.  It is key to understand:

• The challenges they face on a day to day basis
• The projects that are important to them
• How their boss measures success

These data points should serve as the foundation for outbound messaging.

Some buyers will reach out to you...that is the power and the beauty of inbound marketing.  But, like it or not, some buyers require that you do the reaching.  Understanding how, how often and with what medium to reach out - that is the secret sauce of outbound.

Effective outbound also mandates you understand what kind of buyer you are targeting.  Robert did a great job defining different buyer types and we added our two cents on how to sell to them:

So, thanks Robert for a great post.  And readers, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts on how buyer types impact the inbound/outbound marketing mix!

Paul McCord was kind enough to invite me to participate in his Boost Your Sales Series. The following is cross-posted from the Sales and Sales Management Blog.
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I am not a fanatical baseball fan like some of my friends.  My friend Linda can quote stats and facts about the Red Sox till your head spins.  She lives for the game.

Anyway, the reason I want to talk about why prospecting is like baseball is because I recently saw a quote by Mickey Mantle that struck home:

Wow - 7 years without hitting the ball! What dedication, what a positive mental attitude, what a viewpoint that you have to put in the time to get the results you need to be an all star. 

Don't you wish your sales organization understood that successful prospecting needs to be based on the same positive attributes?

How many times have you heard Reps say: "I called those leads and they are terrible"? Then you go into the database and see that they lobbed out a few calls to a few of the leads and, big surprise, they got out of that effort what they put in - nothing. 

Or, how many of them lament that cold calling yields no results yet they never do it? Or, and this one gets my blood boiling, how many times have you heard them call a prospect and say "Bob, I was just calling to follow-up on a whitepaper you recently downloaded"?  Yeah, that's a compelling message!

So, how do you provide them with the dedication, positive mental attitude and the understanding that every prospecting exercise may not result in a home run? You coach them - every great athlete has a great coach behind them.

• Coaching Step 1:
  Give them the metrics against which to measure themselves.
  Baseball is all about stats and so is prospecting.  Set their expectations that they will connect with 20 - 25% of their dials and that 10 - 17% of those connections will result in a qualified opportunity.
  
  
• Coaching Step 2:
  Provide them with the equipment they need to be successful.
  Give them great leads, give them accurate lists and give them great tools.  Have you created elevator pitches that are about your buyer persona and not about you?  Have you crafted voicemail messages and emails templates that deliver value and resonate with your prospect's issues? 
  
  
• Coaching Step 3:
  Act like a coach.
  When was the last time you swung a bat?  If you lead a team, you should spend at least 4 hours a month doing their job.  Get in there and prospect.  There is a double benefit to this - you will walk a mile in their shoes and just as importantly, you will get to hear how the market responds to your messaging.  Then take all that great knowledge and coach your team.
  
  
• Coaching Step 4:
  Let them compete.
  Sales Reps like to compete and allowing them to compete at the level of prospecting levels the playing field.  Not everyone is a superstar when it comes to revenue but everyone can be a superstar when it comes to prospecting.
  
  

Well, I am out of baseball analogies so I guess I will wrap up now, but what I hope you take away from this is that just like Mickey Mantle, your team has to invest time on the playing field if they are going win the game!

(Photo credit: dcJohn)

There are most certainly very strong opinions on the status and future outlook of the Cold Call. Trish's post on Cold Calling 2.0 garnered the most comments this blog has seen in quite some time.

Coincidentally another Brit (I wish I was smart enough to orchestrate this), started an extremely active LinkedIn discussion on the topic.

Jay Powell from Business Intelligence Direct asked:

Jay received 19 answers in 21 hours. This shows me one thing: Cold Calling is as hot a topic for Buyers as for Sellers.

I ran a quick cloud analysis on the keywords used in the 19 answers. Click the image to see the larger version.

Words the buyers used frequently:

• cold
• company
• sales
• vendor

Words the buyers used infrequently:

• information
• listen
• research
• success
• talking

To those that might argue that the Cold Calling 2.0 discussion is being made in a vacuum, I hope this data adds some credibility to the argument. In closing here are few highlights from comments in the LinkedIn discussion.

Thanks for listening and please let me know your thoughts!

(Photo credit: Graham_B)

Every day on Linkedin there seems to be a new discussion started on whether or not cold calling still works.  I am going to say here what I say there:

There is no such thing as "cold calling" any longer.  There is enough information at your disposal to know just about everything there is to know about your buyer except what they had for lunch (unless they are on Twitter!).

Nigel Edelshain just published an ebook called "Don't Cold Call. Social Call." And, he did a "bang up" job laying out this argument (I can say bang up because Nigel is British).  The ebook discusses using social networks and Sales 2.0 tools to prospect.

In a nutshell, Nigel argues that:

• The cold call is dead, if it means "smiling and dialing" with little-to-no-preparation on behalf of the sales person. But smart prospecting is very much alive. Sales people can execute "social calls" using the latest in Sales 2.0 tools and social networks.
  
  
• There are Sales 2.0 tools now available (including social networks) that help you with the 3 most critical factors in successful prospecting:

• Old fashioned cold calling resulted in 1 meeting for every 100 dials. Nigel contends that with social calling you get dramatically increased results - 1 meeting in 12 dials.
  
  

So, if your prospect isn't responding to your marketing efforts, "don't cold call...social call".

What do you think? Can using social networking and Sales 2.0 tools in prospecting increase the ability to "get in" dramatically?   Looking forward to your comments!

In my calling, I have come across a situation that needs to be addressed: Your phone system is sabotaging your sales efforts.

The accounts you are about to read are true.  No names will be mentioned to protect my future prospecting efforts......

I've experienced this as well:  At the end of all of the "Press x for y" the phone system suggests that you go to the website, www.newstartup.com for more information.   So it's back to the web site to Contact us? What????  Just email addresses.  Don't you want to ever speak with anyone?

Now any self respecting cold caller will go for the Sales prompt and ask the helpful sales person to connect you with Mr. VP.  That works in some cases, but only when there is a sales answer.  I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the sales prompt only to find that I am leaving a message in yet again another general mailbox.

This challenge prompted me to keep some stats for myself.  Here is what I came up with:

• If I make a total of 20 calls.
• 4 of them are answered by a live person and all is well with the world.
• 10 of my prospects won't be found in the corporate directory.
• Out of that 10, when a sales prompt is offered, I am put straight into voicemail 5 times.
• That's 5 potential sales opportunities missed.

Here is my point.  I know the name of your company.  I know who I want to connect with; I'm a pro and won't give up.  But if I can't get through to you - will your prospects, potential partners or others be able to?

If it is difficult for me to connect with you I will move on to the next company.  If it is difficult for your prospects to connect with you, won't they move on the next company as well? 

If you have similar experiences, please share.  As we are all in the business of making that connection I am sure we will all find your experiences helpful.

Photo Credit: eddiemcfish